Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels expressed his dissatisfaction with ObamaCare during a speech at the American Enterprise Institute — claiming that the health-care overhaul is anything but “reform,” and stating that Indiana is “only just beginning to grapple — reeling might be the term — with what this will mean at the state level.”
The Administration is touting new $250 checks for seniors who hit the Medicare Part D coverage gap. But the State of Vermont is arguing that if the money is to defray drug costs, and not just a political giveaway, then they should be receiving those checks for the seniors who get their drugs paid for by the state Medicaid program. “The dust-up over rebate checks and who should receive them underscores the challenges of the federal-state partnership in health reform’s implementation. While rules and regulations are written within the Beltway, most of the heavy-lifting, in terms of implementation, rests with state governments.”
Funding to cover the uninsured in state-based, high risk pools until the new insurance subsidies are rolled out is woefully inadequate and would cover less than 10 percent of those eligible, according to studies.
The Senate health care bill (which, along with the Reconciliation Act, became law) would overhaul the entire health-care sector of the U.S. economy by erecting massive federal controls over private health insurance; dictating the content of insurance benefit-packages and the usage of medical treatments, procedures, and devices; altering the relationship between the federal government and the states; transferring massive regulatory power to the federal government; and restricting Americans’ personal and economic freedom by imposing unprecedented mandates on businesses and individuals, including an individual mandate to buy insurance.
House passage of the Senate version of ObamaCare means higher health costs, higher deficits, higher taxes, higher premiums, incentives for employers to drop employees’ insurance, incentives for employers to avoid hiring low-income workers, financial penalties for entering into marriage, further expansion of Medicaid and the launching of a new entitlement program, and the ushering in of a culture of statism and dependency in lieu of limited government and liberty.
In a study commissioned by the state of Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration, the Milliman consulting and actuarial firm concludes that ObamaCare would costs Indiana taxpayers $3.6 billion (in addition to their burden as federal taxpayers), as nearly one-quarter of Indiana residents would be on Medicaid by the end of the decade.
“The $5B allocation attached to [ObamaCare’s] High Risk Pool initiative appears to represents a number dictated more by political feasibility than a fair assessment of true program cost.”
This page provides links to letters written to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius from 12 of the 19 states that have opted out of Obamacare’s federal high-risk pools.
Independent actuarial firm Milliman conducted a study at the behest of Indiana’s state government which found ObamaCare would cost the state $20 million in the next year alone, with almost $3 billion in new costs over the next 10 years.